I recall it being confirmed as a bug. Why else would it be changed in the sequels, and be removed in a future port of Sonic 1?

I personally consider it a feature though. :p

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Same reason the Spindash is added in every Sonic 1 port: people expect it to be the way every other game did it.

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I don't remember the spindash being added in Mega Collection.

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Mega Collection is just emulation. Every direct port of the game has added the Spin Dash IIRC

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But Mega Collection is the one that fixed the spike bug. That's what I was referring to.

EDIT: Obviously the mobile versions also fixed the bug, but those were rebuilt from the ground up by Taxman. To my memory, the Mega Collection ROM is the only "regular" version of the game that fixed it.

Either way, hat's not the point I was trying to make. I'm still pretty sure that it was in fact an unintentional glitch.

Regarding the actual topic, I was just trying to get across that the other games weren't without their own bugs.

But Mega Collection is the one that fixed the spike bug. That's what I was referring to.

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Checked the wiki: Apparently Mega Collection was the only version to change the spikes but not add the spindash.

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Yeah, I actually just turned on the GameCube to make sure I was remembering right, haha. But, other than Taxman's, has any other version changed the spikes? I know Jam didn't, and Mega Collection was at least the first version to do that.

I had kind of thought, just like how spikes instantly kill MegaMan, spikes were intended to be more dangerous to Sonic than other obstacles. Obviously if that's the case, it didn't come across very well.

Unfinished releases? To me those are not prototypes, they are simply unfinished/bugged shipped product. A prototype implies that it is an unfinished and generally not meant to release version of the game, squirreled away to be worked on or shown internally.

Otherwise we can legitimately call Sonic 06 a prototype, as unfinished and buggy as that game is, with literal in-game prompts referring to things that don't exist.

There's a difference between the released version of the game being "a prototype" and the released version having bugs. Several games from that era had bugs and glitches - including major ones! - but nobody asks if those games are prototypes. This topic is dumb.

RE: Sonic 1 spike behavior: It's been debated heavily, I think the latest conclusion was "it was deliberate," but not everyone was convinced and the debate still surfaces from time to time.

IIRC in S1's code there is very specific deliberate code that makes spikes ignore mercy invincibility. Why they chose to do that? Who knows. But it's there.

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There's separate code to handle collisions with spikes, but that doesn't mean "they deliberately wanted spikes to handle differently". For example, spikes were probably one of the first objects coded, before collisions were dealt with on a general basis.

As for Sonic 3 being a prototype, not really. As buggy as Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles are on their own, combined they have a far greater number of bugs.

IIRC in S1's code there is very specific deliberate code that makes spikes ignore mercy invincibility. Why they chose to do that? Who knows. But it's there.

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There's separate code to handle collisions with spikes, but that doesn't mean "they deliberately wanted spikes to handle differently". For example, spikes were probably one of the first objects coded, before collisions were dealt with on a general basis.

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I think they had plenty of time to notice that the spikes didn't work as intended and, even after one Sonic 1 revision, the behavior wasn't changed until late in Sonic 2's development.

IIRC in S1's code there is very specific deliberate code that makes spikes ignore mercy invincibility. Why they chose to do that? Who knows. But it's there.

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There's separate code to handle collisions with spikes, but that doesn't mean "they deliberately wanted spikes to handle differently". For example, spikes were probably one of the first objects coded, before collisions were dealt with on a general basis.

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I think they had plenty of time to notice that the spikes didn't work as intended and, even after one Sonic 1 revision, the behavior wasn't changed until late in Sonic 2's development (even Mystic Cave's "unescapable pit of doom" seems to have been placed with that behavior in mind).

So I'd say it was definitely the intended behavior.

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Actually. hm. I don't recall there being a mention of when the spike behavior was changed in our prototype timeline (TCRF has a very elaborate set of articles on level layout changes, so we at least have one half of the data to extrapolate this from). I wonder if the Mystic Cave Zone placement was before or after?

TCRF does mention that when you look at it a few prototypes in a row, the placement is there to prevent another "wait til time over" bug (the bridge closes over the opening, trapping you in), but no mention of how the spikes are actually handled at that point.